The Future of TFCL: A Roadmap of 2018 (and beyond)

As of this writing, 2,835 gamers have created 763 teams across all of our available leagues and formats. Sure, not all of those teams are currently active, but still. It’s a cool little stat to have, especially when you consider that we as a league didn’t even exist two years ago.

Alright, so this is a general roadmap of what we have planned for TFCL, and how we intend to grow (revive?) Team Fortress 2’s competitive esport scene.

Structure Changes – Ranking

TFCL will operate two separate league structures, one paid, and one free. The general goal and idea is to try and combine both worlds into a single league. High level, low level, and everything in between.

Free Ranks

B Rank is a giant free to play division with prizes. It’s basically no different than what we have right now, so if you’re simply here to compete and have fun, B Rank is the place to go.

C Rank is more of a training division, and intended for teams and players that have no prior competitive experience. We’ll also bring in paid coaches (more on that later) to help guide and teach new teams so that they can one day move up to B or A Rank.

Pay Ranks

A Rank and S Rank are our answers to ESEA’s Open and Invite divisions. The goal is to charge a membership fee, which in turn gets added to the overall prize pool. At 12 teams, A Rank has a pool of $1,000, which is more or less equivalent to ESEA’s Open division. The A Rank pool will also increase depending on how many teams are signed up, to a maximum of $4,000.

A Rank is $15 per player per season.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have S Rank, which is our answer to ESEA’s Invite division. The pool for S Rank depends on how many teams sign up for A Rank, and could go as high as $100,000 per season.

S Rank is $40 per player per season. (note: final price is undecided, and could be as high as $80 per player per season)

We hope to introduce paid rankings into TFCL this Spring, and would love to hear some of your feedback in the comments.

UberJam Lan

The event will be held every November, starting 2018. Expect more information early next year. (note: this is our own self-hosted tournament, and has no relation with the previously mentioned Toronto LAN)

Pick-Up-Games

We’re working on several PUG systems, with the first being a more traditional system found in HLPugs or MixChamp. We’ll announce more when we can.

Weekend Tournaments

Moving forward, we plan to host various sponsored weekend tournaments, aka “cups“. These will be smaller 12-32 team tournaments spread out over a two day weekend.

Sponsored Teams/Organizations

To help encourage esport organizations to join and compete in TFCL, we’re going to make signing up for S Rank or A Rank completely free for the first two seasons. This will only apply to organizations that have been around for at least one year, and have teams in other leagues and games.

We’re hoping that this will bring a ton of new talent into Team Fortress 2. We’ll have more information about this soon.

Travel Benefits

To once again try and entice future talent to join and compete in competitive Team Fortress 2, we’re offering certain travel benefits to each and every team competing in S Rank and A Rank.

Everything we’ve mentioned here will be further expanded upon in future articles and announcements. We want the TF2 competitive scene to grow just as much as you do, which is why we’re going to be doing everything that we can to try and bring new talent into this game. We just want for the world to know how freaking awesome TF2 is, and how absolutely fun and competitive it can be with the right structure. That’s why we’re focusing heavily on making TFCL as appealing as possible for esport organizations. By giving organizations a free pass into TFCL, we’re hoping that they see it as a no-risk opportunity to test the waters of pro TF2. To bring their existing top level teams, and have them compete for free in TF2, and TFCL.

We’re also trying to make sure that this doesn’t deter new players from joining, which is why we’re offering two entirely free ranks, one with a prize pool, and one without. We want TFCL to be a fun and competitive environment for everyone, no matter their experience level.

Remember, this article was meant to be a tiny glimpse into the future of TFCL. We’re keeping things short for now, and will expand upon everything once we’re ready to do so.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to let us know in the comments.